Best VPN Services for Startups
What you are connecting decides this for most startups. A founding team that needs laptops to reach internal tools can start free on Twingate (up to 5 users) or Firezone (up to 6 users) and pay $5 per user a month once it outgrows that; a team that needs one fixed address for a bank or supplier to allowlist wants a gateway product like GoodAccess, at $7 per user plus $49 a month per dedicated gateway.
The eleven services split along two lines. One is what the price counts: eight bill per person, ZeroTier and Defined Networking bill per machine, and OpenVPN Access Server bills per simultaneous connection, so a team with more servers than staff should read the Billed per column before the price. The other is whether a fixed IP is on offer at all. Mesh tools such as Tailscale and NetBird link machines directly and sell no gateway address, while NordLayer, GoodAccess and PureDome sell one for $40 to $50 a month on top of seats.
Our picks
- Free for a founding team of six: Firezone. The Starter plan covers up to 6 users with audit logs and OIDC login included and no card needed; the Team plan is $5 per user, or $4.16 billed annually.
- Giving a contractor one system and nothing else: Twingate. Access is granted to named resources rather than the whole network. Free for up to 5 users, then $5 per user on Teams with Google Workspace sign-in.
- A fixed IP for a bank or supplier to allowlist: GoodAccess. $49 a month per dedicated gateway on top of $7 per user, with a 14-day full-featured trial and no card, so the allowlisting can be proven before paying.
- Connecting a fleet of servers: Defined Networking. Free for up to 100 hosts, then a flat $1 per host per month for unlimited hosts, priced on machines rather than headcount.
- Keeping traffic on a server you run: OpenVPN Access Server. Self-hosted, so the exit IP is your own server's and no vendor sits in the path; 2 connections are free forever, then $7 per connection a month.
At a glance
| Option | Cheapest paid plan | Billed per | Free option | What's free | Dedicated IP or gateway |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $8 per user, per month (Standard plan)source | Per usersource | Free for personal use onlysource | Personal plan: $0 for up to 6 userssource | ||
| $5 per user per month (Teams plan)source | Per usersource | Free plansource | Starter plan: up to 5 userssource | Static IPs are an Enterprise-plan featuresource | |
| $8 per user/month (Lite plan), five-user minimumsource | Per usersource | Money-back guaranteesource | 14-day money-back guarantee on every plansource | +$40/month for a server with a dedicated IPsource | |
| $7 per user / month (Essential, annual billing; $9 monthly)source | Per usersource | Free trialsource | 14-day full-featured trial, no credit card neededsource | +$49/mo per dedicated gatewaysource | |
| $8.45 per user/month (Basic), minimum 5 userssource | Per usersource | Money-back guaranteesource | 30-day money-back guarantee on all planssource | +$50 per gateway/monthsource | |
| $5 per user/month (Team plan), $4.16 billed annuallysource | Per usersource | Free plansource | Starter plan: up to 6 userssource | ||
| $5.00 per seat, per monthsource | Per usersource | Free plansource | 10GB of data every month on the free accountsource | Static IPs are bought separately and shared across the teamsource | |
| EUR 6 per user / month (Team plan)source | Per usersource | Free plansource | Free plan: up to 5 userssource | ||
| $7 per connection / month (Growth plan)source | Per connectionsource | Free plansource | Up to 2 connections, free foreversource | Self-hosted, so the IP is your own server'ssource | |
| $2.00 per device per month (Essential plan)source | Per devicesource | Free for personal use onlysource | Personal plan, a free entry to the platformsource | ||
| $1 per host, per month (Pro plan)source | Per devicesource | Free plansource | Free plan: up to 100 hostssource |
Per user, per device, or per connection
The Cheapest paid plan column is written the way each vendor prints it because the figures do not line up. Defined Networking's $1 is per host and Firezone's $5 is per person, so the $1 plan stays the cheaper one until you run more than five machines for every person, and Defined Networking is free up to 100 hosts anyway. ZeroTier's $2.00 per device also has a floor, since its Essential plan starts at $18 a month with ten devices included.
OpenVPN Access Server's $7 per connection behaves like a per-person price when the whole team is connected all day, and like a discount when some people only log in now and then. NetBird quotes EUR 6 per user, so a US company pays whatever the exchange rate makes it.
What a fixed company IP adds to the bill
The three gateway services charge twice: seats, and the gateway that gives you the address. NordLayer adds $40 a month to seats that start at $8, GoodAccess $49 to its $7 Essential seats, and PureDome $50 to its $8.45 Basic seats. All three also require five users, so a three-person startup pays for five, and a five-person team on PureDome is looking at roughly ninety dollars a month before discounts.
The other routes to an address have limits of their own. Windscribe ScribeForce sells static IPs separately and shares them across the team, Twingate keeps static IPs for its Enterprise plan, and OpenVPN Access Server uses whatever IP your server already has. The five blank cells in that column (Tailscale, Firezone, NetBird, ZeroTier and Defined Networking) are the mesh tools, whose price lists carry no egress address to buy.
Free tiers a company is allowed to use
Tailscale's Personal plan is $0 for up to 6 users and ZeroTier's covers ten devices, but both are licensed for personal or hobby use, so a business starts on Tailscale's 14-day trial and then $8 per user. The free plans a company can stay on are Twingate's 5 users, Firezone's 6, NetBird's 5 users and 100 machines, Defined Networking's 100 hosts, and OpenVPN Access Server's 2 connections. Windscribe's free account, with 10GB of data a month, is a way to try that product before paying.
NordLayer and PureDome have no free tier or trial at all, only a refund window: 14 days at NordLayer and 30 at PureDome, which is the longer time to find out whether the setup works for you.
The options in detail
Tailscale
Tailscale builds a private WireGuard network directly between your machines, so laptops, servers and CI runners reach each other without opening firewall ports or standing up a gateway. It is the easiest of these to roll out, and it counts seats rather than machines: user devices are unlimited on every plan, which suits a small team with a lot of infrastructure. The catch for a company is licensing, not price, because the free Personal plan is only for non-commercial use, so a business account starts on a 14-day trial and then $8 per user. It sells no dedicated gateway IP; the only egress add-on on the price list is Mullvad at $5 per month for every 5 devices.
Twingate
Twingate is the zero-trust option most often picked to retire a legacy VPN: instead of putting people on the network, it grants access to named resources, so a contractor can reach one database and nothing else. The free Starter tier covers up to five users, which is genuinely enough for a founding team, and the $5 Teams plan adds SSO through Google Workspace and stretches to 100 users. Growth costs money in steps: device posture integrations and SSO through Okta or Entra ID sit on the $10 Business plan. Static IPs are held back for Enterprise, so it is a poor fit if your reason for buying is a fixed address to hand a supplier.
NordLayer
NordLayer is the business arm of the company behind NordVPN, and it is shaped like a traditional business VPN: your team connects through virtual private gateways you configure, with threat protection bundled in. That makes it one of the straightforward answers when the goal is a fixed company IP address to allowlist, though the gateway is a real extra cost at $40 a month on top of seats. Two things bite small teams: there is no free tier at all, only a 14-day money-back window, and every plan carries a five-user minimum, so a three-person startup pays for five. The entry Lite plan is internet security only; network access control starts on the $11 Core plan.
GoodAccess
GoodAccess sells a dedicated cloud VPN gateway with a static IP, which is the shape most small companies actually want when a client or a payment provider asks them to connect from a known address. Setup is aimed at teams with no network engineer, and the trial is a full-featured 14 days with no card, so you can prove the IP whitelisting works before paying. Budget for the gateway as well as the seats: $49 a month per dedicated gateway on top of $7 per user, and a five-user minimum. Its Premium tier is where the zero-trust segmentation lives, so the entry plan is best read as a gateway product rather than a ZTNA one.
PureDome
PureDome is PureVPN's business product, and it competes directly with NordLayer and GoodAccess: dedicated gateways, team IPs, and app whitelisting, sold per seat with a five-user minimum. It is the most expensive entry seat in this table, and the gateway add-on is $50 a month, so a five-person team is realistically looking at roughly ninety dollars a month before discounts. There is no free tier or trial, only a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is longer than the usual 14 days and the reason it is still worth testing. Identity provider integrations and device posture checks are held back for the $10 Professional plan.
Firezone
Firezone is an open-source zero-trust replacement for a VPN, built on WireGuard, and the company publishes the whole source so you can check what the client does. For a startup the appeal is the shape of the free tier: the Starter plan covers six users with audit logs and OIDC login included rather than paywalled, and no credit card is needed to begin. The $5 Team plan is the cheapest per-seat zero-trust option here and adds full-tunnel routing and conditional access policies up to 500 users. It has no dedicated gateway IP to buy, and directory sync with Google, Entra ID or Okta is an Enterprise feature quoted by sales.
Windscribe ScribeForce
ScribeForce is Windscribe's team wrapper around its consumer VPN: one bill, a management panel, and every member on the full Pro feature set. It is the cheapest seat in this table and the odd one out in kind, because it encrypts and relocates traffic rather than controlling who can reach which internal system, so it answers privacy, public wifi and geo-restriction problems, not access control. Static IPs are bought as separate purchases and then shared across the team, which is a workable route to an allowlistable address. You can also try the product properly for nothing first: Windscribe's free account gives 10GB of data a month.
NetBird
NetBird is an open-source WireGuard mesh in the same family as Tailscale, with one difference that matters to a cost-conscious team: its free tier is licensed for small teams rather than personal use, covering five users and 100 machines. Prices are quoted in euros because the company is European, so a US startup is exposed to the exchange rate. The Team plan bills only for users and machines that actually connected during the period, and enterprise SSO and SCIM provisioning arrive at that first paid tier rather than two tiers up. You can also run the whole thing on your own infrastructure, which is the usual reason teams choose it over Tailscale.
OpenVPN Access Server
Access Server is the self-hosted original: you run it on your own cloud instance or hardware, which means the exit IP is whatever your server already has and no vendor sits in the path of your traffic. Pricing is the reason it reads oddly next to the rest, because it charges for simultaneous connections rather than people, so a team where everyone is connected all day pays per person in practice, while occasional users cost less. Two connections are free forever, which is enough for a founder and one server, and there is a 14-day trial above that. The trade is operational: patching, sizing and backing up the server is your job.
ZeroTier
ZeroTier thinks in machines rather than people: it creates a virtual network that devices join, which makes it the natural pick when the thing you need to connect is a fleet of servers, embedded boards or robots rather than a room of laptops. Its billing follows that idea, charging per device, so headcount is irrelevant and a two-person team with fifty machines pays far more than a fifty-person team with two. The free Personal tier is licensed for hobby use and covers ten devices on one network, and the paid Essential plan starts at $18 a month with ten devices included. It is a networking layer rather than an access-control product, so identity features are thinner than the zero-trust tools here.
Defined Networking
Defined Networking is managed Nebula, the open-source overlay network Slack built, sold as a hosted control plane with single sign-on and a web console. It has the most generous free tier here by a distance: up to 100 hosts at no cost, which covers the whole machine estate of most early startups, and the paid step is a flat dollar per host per month for unlimited hosts. Like ZeroTier it counts machines rather than seats, so it is priced for infrastructure rather than headcount. It connects hosts peer-to-peer instead of terminating traffic at a gateway, so there is no fixed company IP address to buy.
How we researched this
The set mixes three kinds of product on purpose, because a startup shopping for a VPN meets all of them: per-seat business gateways (NordLayer, GoodAccess, PureDome, Windscribe ScribeForce), zero-trust and mesh access tools (Twingate, Tailscale, Firezone, NetBird), machine-priced overlay networks (ZeroTier, Defined Networking), and one self-hosted server in OpenVPN Access Server. Prices stay in the vendor's own words with the basis attached, and where a page shows both annual and monthly rates we kept the one it shows by default and said which it is.
Several well-known names are missing for a reason. Cloudflare's Zero Trust page no longer lists per-seat prices and asks buyers to get in touch; Proton now sells its business VPN only inside a $12.99 per user suite that also buys mail and storage; Netmaker and AWS Client VPN price by device-hour or with base fees, so no single figure would be fair; and consumer VPNs like Surfshark, ExpressVPN and Mullvad have no team billing or seat management. Prices are as the vendors listed them in September 2026. The tier that unlocks a feature differs by vendor (Okta or Entra ID sign-in sits on Twingate's $10 Business plan and identity provider integrations on PureDome's $10 Professional plan), so price the plan that holds the feature you need, not the entry seat.